Re: Insane Clown Posse Unmasked as Christians

I think these guys depend too much on irony for positive message:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KxTUZ33gdM&feature=related

I'm not a Bill O'Reilly fans, but he's asking rational questions.

Johne Cook
| http://raygunrevival.com | http://authorculture.blogspot.com |


On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 11:00 AM, pcg <[email protected]> wrote:

> Bizarre.
>
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/oct/09/insane-clown-posse-christians-god
>
> Insane Clown Posse: And God Created Controversy
> America's nastiest rappers in shocking revelation – they've been
> evangelical Christians all along
>
> Milwaukee. A bad and quite eerie part of town. This happens to be the
> very block where the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer murdered and ate 17
> people in the 1980s. Now, from all around, thousands of young men and
> women, wearing scary clown face paint, are descending upon a disused
> indoor swimming pool that has been transformed into a music venue.
> They are juggalos, fans of Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope, the rap duo
> known as Insane Clown Posse.
>
> At first glance, it might not be obvious why I'm so excited about
> meeting them. You might dismiss them as just unbelievably misogynist
> and aggressive, and it is true that their lyrics are indeed incredibly
> offensive. Take, for instance, at random:
>
> I'm hating sluts
>
> Shoot them in the face, step back and itch my nuts
>
> Unless I'm in the sack
>
> Cos I fuck so hard it'll break their back.
>
> ICP have been going for 20 years, always wearing clown make-up, which
> looks slightly lumpy because it's painted over their goatees. They've
> been banned from performing in various cities where juggalos have been
> implicated in murders and gang violence. ICP have a fearsome
> reputation, fostered by news reports showing teenagers in juggalo
> T-shirts arrested for stabbing strangers and lyrics like "Barrels in
> your mouth/bullets to your head/The back of your neck's all over the
> shed/Boomshacka boom chop chop bang."
>
> All of which made Violent J's announcement a few years ago really
> quite astonishing: Insane Clown Posse have this entire time secretly
> been evangelical Christians. They've only been pretending to be brutal
> and sadistic to trick their fans into believing in God. They released
> a song, Thy Unveiling, that spelt out the revelation beyond all doubt:
>
> Fuck it, we got to tell.
>
> All secrets will now be told
>
> No more hidden messages
>
> …Truth is we follow GOD!!!
>
> We've always been behind him
>
> The carnival is GOD
>
> And may all juggalos find him
>
> We're not sorry if we tricked you.
>
> The news shook the juggalo community to its core. While some fans
> claimed they'd actually had an inkling, having deciphered some of the
> hidden messages in several songs, others said they felt deeply
> betrayed and outraged: they'd been innocently enjoying all those songs
> about chopping people up and shooting women, and it was Christian
> rock?
>
> Violent J explained himself unapologetically to a New Jersey
> newspaper: "You have to speak their language. You have to interest
> them, gain their trust, talk to them and show you're one of them.
> You're a person from the street and you speak of your experiences.
> Then at the end you can tell them: God has helped me."
>
> Of course, one might argue that 20 years was, under the circumstances,
> an incredibly long time for them to have pretended to be unholy, and
> that, from a Christian perspective, the harm they did while feigning
> unholiness may even have outweighed the greater good.
>
> I've come to Milwaukee because ICP have just released their most
> audacious Christian song to date: Miracles. In it, they list God's
> wonders that delight them each day:
>
> Hot lava, snow, rain and fog,
>
> Long neck giraffes, and pet cats and dogs
>
> Fuckin' rainbows after it rains
>
> There's enough miracles here to
>
> blow your brains.
>
> The song climaxes with them railing against the very concept of science:
>
> Fuckin' magnets, how do they work?
>
> And I don't wanna talk to a scientist
>
> Y'all motherfuckers lying and
>
> getting me pissed.
>
> 10pm. Upstairs, thousands of juggalos are getting drunk in readiness
> for the show. The atmosphere is riotous and exciting. ICP have a
> gimmick of throwing gallons of cheap fizzy soda into the crowd, and
> many juggalos are crushed into the barrier in the expectation of
> getting soaked and sticky. Backstage, ICP arrive to meet me. They're
> wearing their full clown make-up – they refuse to meet journalists
> without it – and are immediately delightful. They smoke, but
> considerately blow the smoke away from my face. "Oh, I'm sorry, let me
> put that out. That's some bullshit on my part," says Shaggy 2 Dope
> when he sees me flinch slightly away from it.
>
> But they also seem melancholy and preoccupied with the negative
> critical response to Miracles. Saturday Night Live just parodied it
> ("Fuckin' blankets, how do they work?") and the internet is filled
> with amused and sometimes outraged science bloggers dissecting the
> lyrics. Violent J and Shaggy have been watching them, they tell me,
> feeling increasingly saddened and irate.
>
> "A college professor took two days out of her fucking life to
> specifically attack us," says Violent J. "Oh yeah, she had it all
> figured out."
>
> One of the ICP road crew locates the video on his iPhone, and it is
> indeed withering: "The [Miracles] video is not only dumb, but
> enthusiastically dumb, endorsing a ferocious breed of ignorance that
> can only be described as militant. The entire song is practically a
> tribute to not knowing things."
>
> "Fuck you, man," says Violent J. "Shut the fuck up."
>
> "Did you anticipate this kind of reaction?" I ask them.
>
> "No," sighs Violent J. "I figured most people would say, 'Wow, I
> didn't know Insane Clown Posse could be deep like that.' But instead
> it's, 'ICP said a giraffe is a miracle. Ha ha ha! What a bunch of
> idiots.'" He pauses, then adds defiantly, "A giraffe is a fucking
> miracle. It has a dinosaur-like neck. It's yellow. Yeah, technically
> an elephant is not a miracle. Technically. They've been here for
> hundreds of years…"
>
> "Thousands," murmurs Shaggy.
>
> "Have you ever stood next to an elephant, my friend?" asks Violent J.
> "A fucking elephant is a miracle. If people can't see a fucking
> miracle in a fucking elephant, then life must suck for them, because
> an elephant is a fucking miracle. So is a giraffe."
>
> We watch the video for another few seconds: "It becomes apparent that
> Shaggy and J consider any understanding of the actual workings of
> these 'miracles' to be corrosive. To them, knowledge is seen as a
> threat… For ICP a true understanding of 'fucking rainbows' would
> reduce them to, as Keats put it, 'the dull catalogue of common
> things'."
>
> Violent J shakes his head sorrowfully. "Who looks at the stars at
> night and says, 'Oh, those are gaseous forms of plutonium'?" he says.
> "No! You look at the stars and you think, 'Those are beautiful.'"
>
> Suddenly he glances at me. The woman in the video is bespectacled and
> nerdy. I am bespectacled and nerdy. Might I have a similar motive?
>
> "I don't know how magnets work," I say, to put him at his ease.
>
> "Nobody does, man!" he replies, relieved. "Magnetic force, man. What
> else is similar to that on this Earth? Nothing! Magnetic force is
> fascinating to us. It's right there, in your fucking face. You can
> feel them pulling. You can't see it. You can't smell it. You can't
> touch it. But there's a fucking force there. That's cool!"
>
> Shaggy says the idea for the lyrics came when one of the ICP road crew
> brought some magnets into the recording studio one day and they spent
> ages playing with them in wonderment.
>
> "Gravity's cool," Violent J says, "but not as cool as magnets."
>
> "I did think," I admit, "that fog constitutes quite a low threshold
> for miracles."
>
> "Fog?" Violent J says, surprised.
>
> "Well," I clarify, "I've lived around fog my whole life, so maybe I'm
> blasé."
>
> "Fog, to me, is awesome," he replies. "Do you know why? Because I look
> at my five-year-old son and I'm explaining to him what fog is and he
> thinks it's incredible."
>
> "Ah!" I gesticulate. "If you're explaining to your  five-year-old son
> what fog is, then why do you not want to meet scientists? Because
> they're just like you, explaining things to people…"
>
> "Well," Violent J says, "science is… we don't really… that's like…" He
> pauses. Then he waves his hands as if to say, "OK, an analogy": "If
> you're trying to fuck a girl, but her mom's home, fuck her mom! You
> understand? You want to fuck the girl, but her mom's home? Fuck the
> mom. See?"
>
> I look blankly at him. "You mean…"
>
> "Now, you don't really feel that way," Violent J says. "You don't
> really hate her mom. But for this moment when you're trying to fuck
> this girl, fuck her! And that's what we mean when we say fuck
> scientists. Sometimes they kill all the cool mysteries away. When I
> was a kid, they couldn't tell you how pyramids were made…"
>
> "Like Stonehenge and Easter Island," says Shaggy. "Nobody knows how
> that shit got there."
>
> "But since then, scientists go, 'I've got an explanation for that.'
> It's like, fuck you! I like to believe it was something out of this
> world."
>
> Violent J's real name is Joseph Bruce, Shaggy's is Joseph Utsler.
> They're in their late 30s. Their career, while at times truly
> glittering, is littered with inadvertent mistakes. Born and raised in
> Christian homes in Detroit, they've known each other since high
> school. "We were dirt poor," Shaggy says. "You can't get no poorer.
> Fighting, food stamps, I was a fucking thief for a living, hustling,
> getting money, we were balls deep in that shit."
>
> Their first band, Inner City Posse, was without clown make-up. They
> were gangsta rappers, and consequently found themselves behaving in a
> gangster-like manner. In 1989, Violent J was jailed for 90 days for
> death threats, robbery and violating probation. When he got out, he
> and Shaggy made some life-defining decisions. How could they keep
> their rap career going but move away from the destructive gang
> lifestyle? How could they change the band's name but keep the initials
> ICP? People liked the initials ICP.
>
> And then it came to them in a flash: Insane Clown Posse! Killer clown
> rap! It was the perfect outlet for their emotions. Write about the
> pain and the anger through the prism of horror-movie imagery. A whole
> new genre.
>
> "We had to work our ass off from the ground up," Violent J says. "We
> don't get radio play. We don't get video play. We get nothing. This is
> our video play…" He indicates the dressing room. "Being on the road.
> We didn't have no Jay-Z telling everyone, 'Hey, look at these guys,
> we're friends with them, listen to them.' To this day, we don't get
> that."
>
> This aspect of things might have turned out rather differently had
> Violent J not made their first big error. It was 1997. Insane Clown
> Posse were enjoying an early flush of success – their albums Riddle
> Box and The Great Milenko had sold a million copies. One night they
> were in a club when a young man handed them a flyer inviting them to a
> party. The flyer read: "Featuring appearances by Esham, Kid Rock, and
> ICP (maybe)."
>
> "Why are you saying we're going to be playing at your party when you
> haven't asked us?" Violent J yelled at the boy.
>
> "It says 'maybe'," he said. "Maybe you will be there. I don't know.
> That's why I'm asking you right now. Are you guys coming to my party
> or what?"
>
> "Fuck no," Violent J replied. "We might have, if you'd asked us first,
> before putting us on the fucking flyer."
>
> That boy grew up to be Eminem and, incensed, he's been publicly
> deriding ICP ever since in lyrics such as, "ICP are overrated and
> hated because of their false identities".
>
> An observation that turned out to be prophetic. "From the very
> beginning of our music, God is in there," Violent J says, "in hidden
> messages."
>
> "Can you give me some examples?" I ask.
>
> There's a small silence. He looks torn between revealing them or
> maintaining the mystery. He shoots Shaggy a glance.
>
> "The Riddle Box," he finally says.
>
> Hey, what's up, motherfucker
>
> This is Shaggs 2 Dope
>
> Congratulating you on opening
>
> the Riddlebox
>
> It looks like you received your prize
>
> The cost, what it cost, was your ASS,
>
> bitchboy!
>
> Hahahahah!
>
> (The Riddle Box, 1995)
>
> "If you died today, God forbid, if you were hit by a car and you had
> to turn the crank to your own riddle box, what would pop out?" Violent
> J peers at me. "Would it be God, or would it be the devil? Only you
> truly know the answer to your own riddle box. We're asking the
> listener, what is in your own riddle box if you were to die today?"
>
> "Cos you can't lie to yourself, man," says Shaggy.
>
> "Only you know the answer to that riddle," Violent J says. "And then
> there's The Ringmaster. In The Ringmaster, we say when you die you
> have to face your own beast. Somebody who has lived a life of
> religion, they face a very small and weak beast when they die. But
> somebody who's an evil bastard will have to face a monster. The
> question is, how big is your ringmaster? If, God forbid, you were hit
> by a car. Ask yourself, Jon." Violent J looks me in the eye. "How big
> is your ringmaster?"
>
> "How come it took you so long to make the announcement?" I ask.
>
> "You had to gain everybody's attention," says Violent J. "You had to
> gain the entire world's trust and attention."
>
> "So all those unpleasant characters in the songs," I ask, "like the
> narrator in I Stuck Her With My Wang, they're examples of people you
> shouldn't be?"
>
> "Huh?" Violent J says.
>
> "Well, it's very unpleasant," I say. "'I stuck her with my wang. She
> hit me in the balls. I grabbed her by her neck. And I bounced her off
> the walls. She said it was an accident and then apologised. But I
> still took my elbow and blackened both her eyes.' That's clearly a
> song about domestic violence. So your Christian message is... don't be
> like that man?"
>
> "Huh?" Violent J repeats, mystified.
>
> There's a silence.
>
> "I Stuck Her With My Wang is funny," Violent J says. "Jokes. Jokes,
> man. Jokes. Jokes. Jokes. It's just a ridiculous scenario. Silly
> stories, man. Silly stories. What's she doing kicking him in the
> balls? We find it funny. But we're saying, while we're close, while
> we're hanging, hey, man, do you ever ask yourself what's in your
> riddle box? If you had to turn the crank today?"
>
> "But still, given that you were secretly Christian, are there any
> lyrics you now regret?"
>
> There's a silence. "Yeah," Violent J says quietly.
>
> "Which ones?"
>
> "Dumb, stupid, idiotic lyrics that I said without knowing any better.
> Back in the day."
>
> "Like what?"
>
> "I really don't want to say. There's one lyric…" He trails off,
> suddenly looking really sad beneath the clown make-up. "Just dumb
> lyrics. I said one lyric one time that I hate. I may have been feeling
> really down that day. I said something, I live with that every day. I
> don't want to point it out."
>
> I later do a search and find it difficult to pinpoint exactly which
> lyric he may be referring to. It just might, I suppose, be, "I took
> aim at a stray dog, and I blew out its brains, it was fresh as hell,
> no feelings for others, you gotta be cold."'
>
> Violent J says releasing Thy Unveiling, coming out as a Christian, was
> the most exciting moment of his life. "It felt so good, brother. I was
> fucking in heaven. Let me tell you something: I would go running at
> night, and my feet wouldn't even touch the ground. I had my headphones
> on, I'd be listening to Thy Unveiling, and I'd be in such a  zone that
> my feet wouldn't even be touching the ground. I'd be literally
> levitating."
>
> He was worried, of course, about the reaction from the juggalos and,
> sure enough, "The emotional impact shook the whole juggalo foundation,
> for good and for ill."
>
> "What did the juggalos who were opposed to it say?" I ask.
>
> "They said, 'Fuck that'," says Shaggy.
>
> "But the juggalos and juggalettes who were for it were so touched,"
> Violent J says. "They said they loved us."
>
> And then the reviews came in.
>
> Blender magazine, in its list of the 50 worst artists in music
> history, call ICP the very worst of all: "Insane Clown Posse sound
> even stupider than they look. Two trailer-trash types who wear face
> paint, pretend to be a street gang and drench cult devotees in cheap
> soda called Faygo, Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope are more notorious for
> their beef with Eminem than their ham-fisted rap-rock music." And
> their nadir, Blender said, the worst musical moment from the worst
> band ever, is The Wraith: Shangri-La, the album that climaxes with Thy
> Unveiling.
>
> I suddenly wonder, halfway through our interview, if I am looking at
> two men in clown make-up who are suffering from depression. I
> cautiously ask them this and Violent J immediately replies. "I'm
> medicated," he says. "I have a lot of medicine that I take. For
> depression. Panic attacks are really a serious part of my life." He
> points at Shaggy. "He's gone through some things as well."
>
> "You do a show in front of how many hundreds or thousands of people."
> Shaggy nods. "You're giving your full being, your soul, to every
> person in that crowd, every pore in your body is sweating, you're
> fighting consciousness, just to get it out of you, and after the show
> all your fans are partying, 'Yeah! Rock and roll!' And you're just
> here." He glances around the dressing room. "You're just fucking
> sitting here."
>
> Violent J turns to him and says, softly, "If we moved furniture for a
> living we'd have a bad back or bad knees. We think for a living. We
> try to create. We try to constantly think of cool ideas. And every
> once in a while there's a breakdown in the engine… I guess that's the
> price you pay."
>
> Shaggy nods quietly. "I get anxiety and shit a lot," he says. "And
> reading that stuff people write about us… It hurts."
>
> "Least talented band in the world," Violent J says. "No talent. When I
> hear that I think, 'Damn. Are we that different from people?'"
>
> He looks as if he means it – as if he sometimes feels hopelessly stuck
> being him.
>
> It's just a terrible twist of fate for Insane Clown Posse that theirs
> is a form of creative expression that millions of people find
> ridiculous. But then suddenly, palpably, Violent J pulls himself out
> of his introspection. They're about to go on stage and he doesn't want
> to be maudlin. He wants to be on the offensive. He shoots me a defiant
> look and says, "You know Miracles? Let me tell you, if Alanis
> Morissette had done that fucking song everyone would have called it
> fucking genius."
>
> • This article was amended on 11 October 2010. The original referred
> to Insane Clown Posse's announcement on their Christianity as
> "recent". This has been corrected.
>
> --
> -pcg
>  [email protected]
>
> --
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